From the Farmers Weekly UK website, www.fwi.co.uk
MONDAY 26 JULY 1999

Greenpeace Lord arrested at GM trashing

By Johann Tasker

LORD MELCHETT, executive director of Greenpeace, is among 20 people
under arrest after protesters uprooted another field of genetically
modified (GM) crops.

The 2.4ha (six-acre) crop of GM maize which was being grown at Lyng,
near Dereham, Norfolk was uprooted in the early hours of this morning.

Farmer William Brigham, who was growing the maize crop, told Farmers
Weekly last Wednesday that it was "no more than a week away" from
flowering.

He had refused to bow to pressure from Greenpeace and the Norfolk
Genetic Information Network, which had asked for the crop trial to be
abandoned.

Greenpeace director Peter Melchett, who is also a Norfolk farmer, called
at a public meeting two weeks ago for the Lyng maize to be destroyed.

The environmental groups claimed that nearby organic crops would have
been threatened with large-scale cross pollination had the GM maize
flowered.

AgrEvo, the company behind the Lyng trial, insisted the crop was safe,
although it emerged over the weekend that the GM maize had been banned
in Switzerland.

The Swiss authorities banned the crop out of concern that it could
contaminate crops and honey, according to yesterday's Independent on
Sunday.

The paper quoted a report was published earlier this year by the Swiss
Federal Bureau for the Environment, Forests and Landscape.

"Harmlessness to humans and the environment has not been adequately
proven and the risk cannot be sufficiently reduced by taking technical
measures," said the report.

The Lyng crop is the third of the government's seven field-scale GM
trials to come to a premature end since they were planted earlier this
year.

Captain Fred Barker was ordered to destroy a GM oilseed rape crop last
month by the trustees of his Lushill Farm, Hannington, near Swindon.

Last week, more than 400 protestors attacked a 10ha (25 acres) site of
GM oilseed rape at Model Farm, Watlington, near Oxford.

The withdrawal of those two sites means only one GM oilseed rape is left
- - at Boothby Graffoe, Lincolnshire.

The remaining three GM maize trials are at Spital-in-the-Street,
Lincolnshire; Mortimer, Berkshire; and Harpenden, Hertfordshire.